Baltic States – CIS, Energy, EU – Baltic States, Legislation

The date was set at a meeting of European Union energy ministers in Brussels on Monday, Lithuania's Energy Minister Zygimantas Vaiciunas told BNS.

"We agreed that from now on every intermediate step will be controlled and coordinated, as we have no other choice – we have to agree on technical and political level by next June (…). The main message is – and I really feel this – that we will make the final decisions next year. It is very important that we will be able to initiate the ENTSO-E procedure," Vaiciunas told BNS.

In his words, a fundamental agreement was reached in Brussels that the two synchronization studies that are currently in progress would be final.

"Up until now the principle of work was from study to study. Today's meeting clearly stated that the two studies would be the last ones – a dynamic and frequency study. This is the significant achievement of this meeting – we agreed on the content on the studies and all countries know what the studies will include, and the information will be sufficient for us to make a decision," the energy minister said.

In his words, the intermediate results of the studies will possibly be proposed to the European Council in March.

The meeting between the ministers and the EC on Monday also approved a detailed action plan, which envisages specific steps and a schedule of work until June of 2018, including the preparation of both studies.

The meeting was attended by EC Vice-President Maros Sefcovic in charge of energy union and Commissioner Miguel Arias Canete responsible for climate policy and energy.

Vice-President responsible for the Energy Union Maros Sefcovic, Commissioner for Climate Action and Energy Miguel Arias Canete, and the Ministers of Energy of Estonia Kadri Simson, Latvia Arvils Aseradens, Lithuania Zygimantas Vaiciunas and Poland Krzysztof Tchorzewski, agreed on the way forward to find by the end of May 2018 at the latest a solution on the best way to synchronize the Baltic states' electricity grid with the continental Europe system, the European Commission said in a press release.

The parties welcomed the progress achieved since their last meeting in September 2017 noting in particular that the final necessary technical studies on dynamic analysis and system frequency stability have been launched by the transmission system operators of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland and the European Network of the Transmission System Operators for electricity (ENTSO-E). They reiterated the importance of completing all remaining technical studies by May 31, 2018 at the latest and decided to monitor the progress on a continuous basis.

The vice-president, the commissioner and the ministers reaffirmed their strong commitment to the synchronization project as a cornerstone for the implementation of the Energy Union priority of the Juncker Commission. 

Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland have so far not reached an agreement on how to desynchronize the Baltic power grid from the Russian and Belarusian power system and synchronize it with the Western European one.

The European Commission's Joint Research Center said in its findings in September that the best synchronization scheme for the Baltic states is via two LitPol Link interconnections, which would entail a cost of 770-960 million euros, while the synchronization via a single link would cost 900 million euros. Synchronizing the Baltic states with the Nordic region is estimated to cost from 1.36-1.41 billion euros.

After Latvia and Estonia voiced doubts about the single-link synchronization, Lithuania's electricity transmission operator Litgrid proposed to build the second link after 2025, the planned date for project completion and disconnection from the Russian BRELL electricity ring.